In wireless load balancing, highly loaded cells are relieved from the load by offloading some of the load to cells with lighter loads. Load balancing equalizes the traffic demand and real traffic supply to increase fairness among different, for example adjacent cells, which may include, macro cells, small wireless cells, and WiFi cells. In one example, heterogeneous user distributions lead to an increased need for load balancing at busy times, when some cells are lightly loaded and other cells are congested.
In user-in-the-loop (UIL), a user is involved in network access decisions. For example, when a user is receiving a low signal strength, the user may be asked to move to a location where the signal reception is better. The user receives better service, and the communications controller may better serve other users. Temporal and spatial UIL controls may use incentives. In spatial UIL, the user may be guided to a better location within the same cell, for example based on spectral efficiency. In temporal UIL, the user may be instructed to wait for a later time when the network will be less congested.